I breathe it in. Maybe when I get home there will be another message from Harrison.
———
As I shop for hot dogs, ketchup, and ice cream, a smile does find my lips. This could be a nice night—once Monet goes to bed, that is. Grable and me, girl talk. I toss in a brownie mix and a bag of peanut M&Ms. After reading the directions for the brownie mix, I gently add a carton of eggs to my shopping cart. We can sit in the living room, and I’ll let Grable have Aunt Lucy’s chair. I’ll light the vanilla candles Iva gave me for Christmas. She gave everyone candles as gifts—I think to cover the odor of her cigarettes. Over the years, she’s grown tired of the way some of the relatives complain about “that nasty smell.”
I make a mental note that pint-sized Bell mason jars are on sale. If I had a cell phone I could call Ducee and ask if she’d like me to buy some for her next chutney-making event. But even if I could call, I wouldn’t be able to talk with my grandmother. Ducee doesn’t answer her phone. She hears it ring; at least I think she does. She just doesn’t ever pick it up. I don’t know why she owns a phone. Iva says it is in case one of us walks into her house, finds her having a heart attack, and needs to call 911.
That did happen once. Mrs. McCready, Ducee’s neighbor with the streak of silver hair, entered my grandmother’s house one autumn afternoon, bringing over her renowned applecinnamon-walnut pie. She dropped the pie onto the hardwood when she found Ducee slumped over in her La-Z-Boy recliner. After calling Ducee’s name and patting her face, Mrs. McCready dialed 911. The ambulance whisked Ducee away, and Mrs. McCready sat in the recliner to catch her breath. Then she called Iva, who panted all the way to Wayne Memorial. That was eighteen months ago. Ducee says she’s fine now. Iva isn’t so sure.
On my way home, I rush into McGuire’s for fish food and a new net. I love the smell of the dingy pet store and the way the floorboards creak as I walk the aisles. It’s always a treat to be greeted by Flannigan, the one-legged macaw who sits in a metal cage by the entrance. I can’t stay long; I don’t want the gallon of Chocolate Nutty Chocolate to melt in the trunk of my Ford. But I do tell the bird he is beautiful.
“You’re beautiful,” repeats Flannigan. He hops on his perch, raises one green wing, opens his beak, and says it again.
I smile.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell Flannigan.
To which he mimics, “You’re beautiful.”
I swear I could keep this up all day. Flannigan is a real egobooster.
“How is your grandmother?” asks Mr. McGuire, clad in a pair of patched overalls. His hat is emerald green and has the phrase “Thank God I’m Irish” stitched above the rim. Mr. McGuire and my grandmother are extremely proud of their Irish heritage, whereas Iva wishes she was Italian, because then she’s certain she’d have dark, thick, killer hair. “Every man would turn to see me,” she once told us with a seductive smile. “Me—dark, killer hair and red lipstick. I’d knock their socks off.”
“Ducee’s fine,” I say to Mr. McGuire, although Iva wouldn’t agree. Iva would go on and on about how Ducee is lacking zest and looking pale.
With a wide net, Mr. McGuire takes a goldfish out of a tank and slips it into a plastic bag for a woman in a pink jacket. “I don’t see her much these days. Getting things ready for our family reunion?” He can call it our reunion, even though he’s not biologically related to us. All of Mount Olive remembers that my great-grandparents loved him like a son.
“Yeah, she and Iva keep busy with all that reunion planning.”
He hands the bag to the woman, who grins at the fish as though she’s just won it in the lottery. I hope she enjoys her new goldfish for a long time; she seems like she’ll be a good owner. If her fish does happen to die, I beg her to please not flush it down the toilet. Fish deserve a proper burial. I’ve had sixteen pet fish die over the course of my life, and I am honored to say that each one got not only a ground burial but a eulogy.
The woman debates about fish food while Mr. McGuire says to me, “Actually, I don’t see much of any of your clan. They must not love fish. Not like you do.” His smile, which covers his wrinkled face, warms my heart.
“Except you did see Monet and Grable the other day. Or maybe you heard Monet the other day.”
He laughs. “Monet is an energetic lass, isn’t she?”
I do love the way his accent rolls off his tongue. Some days I think I’d like to speak with an Irish accent. Ducee says everyone has a story, and I’ve heard the pet store owner’s many times. At eighteen, Mr. McGuire came to New York City from Dublin in search of a better life. Although the city held many of his relatives, he chose to leave and head farther south. North Carolina beckoned him, and he was hired to work the tobacco farm of Mount Olive’s Seven Arches. This was Ducee’s parents’ farm, and being Irish, they accepted Joseph wholeheartedly as one of the family.
At the age of twenty-five, he saved enough to make a down payment on a tiny feed shop on Main Street. Born with a fascination for fish, he added fish and aquariums to the inventory. Soon he was selling more fish than feed. That was when he changed the name of his store from Mount Olive Feed to McGuire’s Pet World.
I watch Mr. McGuire ring up the cost of the goldfish and fish food on his cash register. He won’t go modern; he has used the same ancient register for decades. And I know he will never get a computer.
The woman thanks him; the bell on the door chimes as she walks out.
Remembering why I’m here, I pick out an orange cylinder container of fish flakes and search for a net.
After he rings up my purchases, a solemn look encompasses Mr. McGuire’s green eyes. “Monet’s father was here.”
“Oh, really?”
Mr. McGuire is silent, as though contemplating whether or not to continue talking.
I stick a thumbnail in my mouth and wait.
“Monet’s father wasn’t with Monet.” A significant pause. “Or with Grable. He wanted minnows. Appeared to be going fishing early this morning. A canoe was on top of the SUV.”
I wonder why Mr. McGuire’s voice is getting lower. I step nearer to the counter so I can hear better.
That’s when he says, “A young thing was with him.”
“With Dennis?”
Joseph McGuire holds my eyes with his gaze and nods.
I feel my mouth dry up like water evaporating under a scorching sun.
“I don’t mean to be nosey, but the two were acting all cozy together.” He wriggles his eyebrows. “Like they were headed to the Southern Belle Motel. A wee time out in the canoe and then some time under the covers, if you know what I mean.”
I can’t find my voice. I want to dismiss everything he’s told me. Perhaps this is a dream and my alarm will go off soon.
At last I say, “Don’t tell anyone.” I repeat this line twice, just like Flannigan would. As I head out of the store, I am faced with a huge dilemma. Do I tell Grable tonight that her husband was seen with another woman? That her mother’s image of him as a playboy is correct?
In my car, it hits me—Dennis had an early flight to Boston this morning. Or did he?
I don’t bother turning the heat on; my car is toasty. Or maybe it’s me. I am sweating with sheer disbelief.
Chapter Eight
After our dinner of pepperoni pizza and hot dogs sliced beside a pool of ketchup, Grable tucks Monet into the guest room’s double bed.
As the two snuggle together and Grable reads Pinocchio to Monet, I wash the dishes in the sink. I have a dishwasher but sometimes choose to wash by hand because hot suds are therapeutic. They clear my mind and help me think. I am still wondering how to tell Grable what Mr. McGuire saw at his shop. Three times tonight Grable commented that Dennis was on a business trip in Boston. Each time I was tempted to let her know that he was really buying minnows with another woman. A woman “acting all cozy” with him. But even though my hands are deep in the hot, lemon-scented suds, the words to tell my cousin won’t emerge. Why can’t my therapy work for me
tonight?
When Grable enters the kitchen, I have the oven on and am pouring the batter for double chocolate fudge brownies into an aluminum pan.
“Remember the brownies we made for the reunion last year?” Grable lets out a laugh. She has a book in her hand and sits with it at the kitchen table.
“You mean the ones Monet helped us with?” Monet managed to add a quarter of a bottle of vanilla extract to the mix while Grable and I stood at the front door of her house convincing a Jehovah’s Witness solicitor we didn’t need his literature. After a lengthy discussion and not at all convinced, the man left us with several pamphlets. Grable and I baked the brownies as we talked about the Bible, not realizing what had happened. It was at the reunion’s Friday night dessert party when we heard our cousin Aaron comment on how “vanilla-y” the chocolate brownies tasted.
“Uh-oh,” Grable said after she took a bite of one. “I thought they smelled awfully strong.”
“Monet,” I said with certainty.
“Did she help you cook?” asked Aaron, approval swelling in his voice. Cousin Aaron is the youth pastor at Third Presbyterian, and one of his beliefs is that children should learn early on what he calls survival skills. For Aaron, these include baking, cooking, sewing, and cleaning.
“She’s two, Aaron,” Grable reminded him. “She needs to work on the skill of potty training first, and then she can be creative in the kitchen.” That summer was when Grable thought Monet should be out of diapers, even though the older relatives muttered she was expecting “too much from that poor child.”
Now Grable opens a hardback book on koi, filled with photos of actual ponds and aquariums in Japan. Aaron gave me the book when I graduated from UNC-Greensboro. He thinks I should be proud of my birth land and has supplied me with the pagoda in my fish tank, a fan a friend brought back from a trip to Osaka, and a framed woodblock print of an Asian lady in an orange-and-silver kimono. “Roots are important,” he tells me.
I’ve never bothered to explain to Aaron why I don’t care to be reminded of Japan. Why should I attempt to get him to see things from my perspective? He knows my mother died there one winter night in a house fire and my father has never been the same. He’s been told I flew back to Virginia with Father shortly after her death. That Ducee brought me to North Carolina to console herself and me, certain she could do a better job of it than Father’s emotionally challenged family in Richmond. Father stayed with his parents awhile and then came to Ducee’s to pick me up. He bought a one-story white house for us. Aaron and his parents even visited us there a few times.
Yet Aaron continues to find ways that I can be connected to “my roots.” Ducee says to graciously accept these Japanese items from him. Pressing her wrinkled hands together, she explains that this is how Aaron shows he cares for me. “Sometimes,” she whispers, “you just have to let people be who they are.”
“This book is gorgeous,” says Grable as she turns the glossy pages. “Look at the fish ponds. I heard some people really do have ponds like these in their backyards.”
Does she want me to agree? To tell her that I do know one person in Japan with an outdoor pond? I consider sitting at the kitchen table with her, smiling and saying, “Grable, guess what? I’ve been writing to this man who lives in Kyoto.”
What would Grable say? Probably something like, “Don’t you know he could be a stalker or a mass murderer? Be careful.”
I open the bag of M&Ms and pour them into a bowl. I offer the bowl to my cousin.
“Oh,” she says hungrily to the chocolate, “I shouldn’t.”
I place the bowl by her right elbow. “You should.”
Grable closes the book, takes a handful of M&Ms, and declares, “I want to go somewhere!” She pops two pieces of chocolate into her mouth. “I signed up for this travel club where they send you brochures on trips. Costa Rica looks like a dream in the pictures. Beautiful mountains, beaches, and palm trees. I’ve never seen a real live palm tree.” She chews a blue M&M. “I wish Dennis and I could go there.”
I want to tell her she isn’t going to Costa Rica with her husband because Dennis is canoeing with another woman. Now, just how would I phrase that? “Uh, Grable, Mr. McGuire saw Dennis this morning with a woman. They had a canoe on top of a SUV. Doesn’t Dennis drive a BMW?”
Instead, I take the brownies out of the oven and ask if she’d like one with Chocolate Nutty Chocolate.
“I’ll have to diet for weeks,” she cries and then says she’ll take one with a small scoop of ice cream. “Dennis used to say he wanted to travel. We would lie in bed on Saturday mornings and make plans.”
I don’t care to think about Dennis in bed right now, thank you. I want to push Dennis, and everything about him, far from my mind.
She sighs. “Oh, Nicole, I wish he would spend more time at home.”
Me too, I think, but I just nod.
She licks ice cream off her fork as I bite into my chocolate brownie. It is warm and gooey, soothing every crevice of my mouth.
Suddenly, Grable says, “You’re lucky you got to go to Japan.”
“What?”
“You know, that you lived there.”
“I don’t remember anything. It doesn’t count.”
She takes a bite of her brownie with the mound of ice cream melting over it. “But you were at least there.”
Okay, I won’t argue with her. Apparently she is trying to make some point.
“I’ve been nowhere.” She licks a smudge of chocolate off her top lip. “Nowhere.”
“Well, you’re still young. Your life isn’t over.”
Casting her eyes down, she softly says, “Maybe not.”
Suddenly I wish I could make her laugh. Where is clowning Uncle Jarvis when you need him? He’d tell a few jokes and have us both feeling giddy, not that the jokes would be funny, but as he threw back his head and roared, we’d laugh at him.
I remind her about the time Uncle Jarvis sat on the picnic bench Ducee had just painted.
Grable’s face shines. “He had paint all over the backside of his leisure suit.”
“And no one could bear to tell him because he was so proud of that ugly suit.”
“He got it at the Goodwill, didn’t he?”
Together we chime, “For seventy-five cents!”
Grable laughs, and so do I until a small snort escapes through my nose.
“It was green, wasn’t it?”
“The paint or the suit?”
She can’t remember. “Didn’t Richard end up telling him?”
I give her a sour look.
“Didn’t he?” Finishing her brownie, she asks, “How is Richard these days?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Grable looks horrified.
Okay, if she must know. “We broke up.”
“Why?”
“Differences.” I avoid her eyes by looking away. My kitchen ceiling fan needs cleaning. There are rows of dark dust lining each blade. One day I’ll use a chair so I’ll be high enough to wipe off all that unsightly dust. One day, but now I just stare at the fan, refusing to say more about Richard.
Grable respects my desire to not discuss Richard and me. Says she is sorry we broke up and then drops the subject. Moves on to this year’s dessert night at the family reunion. “Think we should get Monet to help us make the brownies again?”
I laugh. It’s not that funny, but I just want to be able to laugh at something.
She joins me.
I’m sure Mr. McGuire was mistaken. The man who entered his shop this morning was just a Dennis look-alike. Had to be. Dennis, who loves his daughter and wife, is in Boston this weekend.
———
I retrieve Sazae from the closet, spray her with a lavender spritzer to cover up the moldy orange aroma, and lie in bed with the lights out. There is a tap at my bedroom door. “Yes?”
Grable eases into view. She’s wearing a salmon nightgown with lacy sleeves. She smells of cold cream. “Nicole, I’m so
rry.”
I sit up. “About what?”
“All the travel talk. I know Japan holds your sad past.” The warmth from her voice spreads over me. “I’m sorry.”
I swallow, pause, and murmur, “It’s okay.”
“If I could change it all for you, oh, I would.”
“Thanks, Grable.”
She yawns, turns to leave, then faces me again to add, “I wish we could do this every Friday night.” Even in the darkness, I see her smile. “Well, good night.”
After she closes the door, I think about Dennis and that other woman. I wish I could change things for Grable, too. Then it is as though Ducee, smelling of soft lilac, is sitting beside me, gently patting my hand and saying, “You aren’t in control of everything or anybody.”
A hard Southern Truth for anyone.
Chapter Nine
Of course I have wondered what Harrison really looks like. In my recent dreams, he is a remarkably large carp with a scaly orange body and face. He has a rich, deep voice. I don’t think they let carp, even talking ones, teach English at universities in Japan, so I am certain Harrison Michaels is a human being.
As I watch my fish, I hear Kristine’s squeaky voice asking, “Is he cute?” She doesn’t know about Harrison, of course, but she would ask this if she did. He could be wildly handsome, traffic-stopping gorgeous, or as ugly as Uncle Jarvis’s leisure suit. What if he has the features of a hunchback or a gnome? What if he looks like a serial killer? Maybe I prefer pretending he is the large and gentle fish of my dreams.
Then why did I ask that he send a picture? He knows what I look like because there are thumbnail color photos of each contributor on the Pretty Fishy Web site. My picture was taken by Ducee in her kitchen. My hair is tamed, my freckles barely noticeable, and I actually have a happy smile on my face. My bio says I teach English at Mount Olive Middle School and owned my first goldfish at age six.
Ducee says to look at the heart, not the face. She tells us God puts more value on matters of the heart than those of the face. That’s fine to say, but how many people can really do that? I’ve known many wonderful people who never get second glances, yet they have hearts of gold. Those of us with only hearts of gold going for us have to strive a little harder to make it in this world where beauty is immediately appraised.
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